Fresh Fields (35 page)

The man rapped loudly on the glass with his knuckles.

“Hey, there's somebody pervin' out here!” he bellowed. “Hey, I've caught a fuckin' perve!”

The youth made another effort to pull away, but the man shoved him against the wall and pinned him there while he banged his fist against the window frame.

“Hey, I've caught a perve! Phone the fuckin' Jacks!”

The blind went up and light spilled out. Sunny peered anxiously through the glass.

“Hoy!” the man yelled to him. “Phone the fuckin' Jacks!”

Sunny peered harder.

“Here he is!” the man said, pulling the youth away from the wall and into the light.

Sunny was still adjusting his shorts with one hand. Behind him in the room Delia was clutching her dressing-gown tightly round her and looking shocked and frightened.

It was obvious that Sunny couldn't quite see who was outside. The man tapped on the window and made a gesture to him to open it. Sunny fumbled with the catch.

“What is this kerfuffle occurring?” the youth heard Sunny ask as the window went up. And he saw Delia coming cautiously forward. In a moment they would be able to see who was there.

He pulled away hard and got free of the man's grip, then turned and ran.

“Hey, you fuckin' . . .!” the man yelled after him.

The youth felt too weak in the knees to run properly and expected to feel himself being grabbed again. But he wasn't. He heard Delia's voice saying, “Is that you, Dave?” and, “What on earth's going on?” He realised the man who'd grabbed him was the bloke from the end garage room, the night-shift worker, and he sensed that the bloke had vaguely realised who he was just as he'd pulled free.

“The little bastard was pervin' through the window!” he heard the man tell them. “Getting a good eyeful of
somethin'
, he was!”

The youth had not known which direction he'd run. It turned out to have been towards the backyard. He got to the tangle of vines and paused, ready to make for the back gate. He listened carefully above the sighing of the breeze in the foliage. There was no-one coming. He could tell from the voices that the man was still at the window, explaining what had happened.

From being like slow motion, everything turned to a rapid blur. His mind sped. He might just have a minute before they came down to the backyard. They might be taking a minute to phone the police or whatever. He must try to get his things from his room, right now. He ran to his door and fumbled in his pocket for his key, then grappled frantically to get it into the lock. He ordered himself to stop the panic. The door flew open and he flicked the light on and went in. If they came now they'd have him like a rat in a trap. He began to count the seconds under his breath and as he counted he got his bag and laid it open on the bed and put the few important things into it—the White Book, the old broken spurs of Clem's, a couple of pieces of clothing. He tried to think what else, but panic was rising again: the words “get out, get out, get out” were chiming with the seconds as he counted them off. He was up to twenty-something seconds now. Or had he lost count and got confused? Where was his money? He couldn't think. In his pocket? Yes! Go then!

He shouldered the bag and went out, half-expecting to find them standing by the door. He could no longer hear voices along the driveway. Where were they? He ran to the back gate and entered the lane, then scurried as fast as he could along it, his ears pricked for any sound behind him. At the end of the lane he paused and looked along the street in both directions. He bolted down the street to the next corner, then turned left and ran to the corner after that. He stopped, out of breath. The police would be alerted by now. He didn't know what the cops did when they got word of a perve. Did they arrive with sirens and flashing lights? Or did they creep up stealthily? Should he focus on being quick, or being careful? He was standing there too long. He began counting seconds again, to give himself a time frame. The panic was rising once more. The cops hate perves. That was common knowledge. The police probably give perves a good bashing when they catch them. And perves get bashed up in prison too. That was a well-known fact.

Then a voice in his head said very clearly and calmly: “Start walking in a normal manner, and keep going till you're out of the area.”

He supposed it was Diestl, but wasn't sure.

He did what the voice said.

 

HE HAD
walked solidly for about an hour. The energy that shock and fear had given him had drained away and he felt exhausted, hardly able to keep lifting his feet. The breeze had gone and the air hung heavy and warm. The youth stopped for a minute to think. There were no people in the dark streets and only an occasional car went by. One of them was a taxi with its “For Hire” sign lit. He half-thought to flag it down, but he had nowhere in particular to go and would not know what to tell the driver. He wanted more than anything to lie down and was wondering where he might find a sheltered spot.

“Good evening,” a voice said beside him.

He jumped with fright. He was next to someone's front fence and an old chap was standing in the shadows with a sprinkler hose in his hand. The youth had not heard the faint sound of the water.

“They like a bit of a drink after dark,” the old chap said, swishing the spray onto some broad leaves so that it made a soft pattering sound. “Do any gardening yourself?”

The youth had recovered enough to mutter, “No.”

“I took it up when I retired,” the old chap said. “To give myself an interest. And then I got hooked on it. Wouldn't be without my plants now. The thing of it is, they stay with you when everything else has gone—the job, the family. That all goes, one way and another. But the plants are always there.”

The old chap didn't seem to mind that a strange youth had come to stand at his front fence in the middle of the night.

Suddenly the youth yearned to be like this old chap, to be seventy or eighty, to be on the pension and finished with everything except the plants that like a drink after dark and are always there. And to know that sometime in your sleep you'll probably just drift away without even knowing it. Life was too hard and too complicated. And the complication, the youth saw, was in the moment-to-moment detail rather than in the larger scheme of it. You could think your way through the big scheme—or try to, at least—but the devil is in the detail. That phrase had popped into his head. He'd heard or read it somewhere. Yes, that summed it up:
The devil's in the detail
. The devil suddenly jumps out of some casual-seeming moment, out of a trivial detail—like whether there's a crease in the blind of a window—and before you know it a disaster has happened and can never be made to
un
happen.

He half-thought to ask the old chap whether he'd found life very complicated, and whether the devil had kept leaping out of the detail at him, and how he had coped with the whole tangle of it. After seventy or eighty years a person must know a thing or two.

The youth wished someone would tell him, for instance, whether his life was the way it was because he was doing it wrong, or whether life just happened in certain ways no matter what you did. Was “life” more inside yourself, in the form of thoughts and feelings and dreads and decisions, or was it more outside, like weather conditions that you have to put up with or adapt to. He thought of Lawson's “Faces in the Street.” Do the faces make themselves miserable, or is it the street that does it to them? A bit of both, he supposed. You do the best you can inside yourself, and you cope with the outside weather as best you can too.

He might have asked the old chap about it, but he had walked on and the old chap was a couple of streets back.

But of course he didn't need the old chap's advice. He had Diestl. Diestl had merged into step with him. The youth felt the weight of the Schmeisser, the roughness of the torn tunic, the rhythm of the limping walk. How familiar and comforting it was.

“Where have you been?” the youth asked in his mind.

“I've been with you all the way.”

“I didn't realise.”

“Your mind wanders.”

“Yes, I know. But I've been thinking about interesting things. About The Battle of Honour and about The Great Reciprocation.”

“They were good ideas. They'll help you do what you need to do.”

“Will they?”

“Of course. That's why those ideas came to you. Did you think it was all unconnected?”

“I wasn't sure.”

“But now the situation's laid out.”

“Like it was for the lone Viking, and for Harry Dale, and for the Bushranger?”

“That's it.”

“So everything is as it should be?”

“Pretty much.”

“Is it very close now?”

“You know the answer to that. You know the instrument is at hand.”

“What if it gets sold? Anyone could walk into that shop and buy it any time.”

“You know that won't happen. You know it is meant for you.”

“Yes.”

“All the same, don't get careless. Even if a thing is meant to be, it still has to be
done
. You might let them off the hook if you get sloppy about it.”

“I won't get sloppy.”

“Good.”

“I won't let them off the hook.”

“I know. If I hadn't been sure of that I wouldn't have stayed with you all this time.”

“Thanks for believing in me.”

“You're welcome.”

“And for always coming to help me in that dream. The Tunnel of Love one. I still don't quite understand what all that meant.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“I know you never liked her.”

“It was never a matter of liking or not liking. She helped you through. She was necessary, but only up to a point.”

“I see that now.”

“That's it then.”

“I've got money. I'll go and buy it first thing.”

“It'll be there.”

The Diestl mood began to break up and fade, as it always did, but the youth limped on down empty streets and the hours of the night went by.

 

IT WAS
nine days later. He had a blue airline bag with a shoulder strap. The bag was cheap and had a nasty synthetic feel, but that didn't matter because he only needed a few hours use from it. He'd bought it at Woolworths and taken it back to the room he'd rented in an inner-city residential. He'd left it on the bed while he sawed the barrel and stock off the rifle. Then he'd put the cut-down rifle and the box of bullets into the bag and had zipped it up. He had walked back and forth across the room with the bag first in one hand and then in the other, to accustom himself to the weight and feel of it. Then he had tried it with the strap over one shoulder and then the other. It was okay.

He carried the bag along a city street. It was three o'clock in the afternoon and at around eight o'clock that night he had to be at a certain location where all would be revealed. That phrase kept running through his mind:
All will be revealed
. Oh yes, he was thinking, I have the bag of tricks right here. Actually it's just the one trick, but it's a bobby-dazzler. You'll read all about it tomorrow. He kept his eyes level and didn't mind exchanging glances with the oncoming people. He felt as confident and cheerful as he ever had in his life.

He could keep on walking, but it was a cold and windy day and he didn't want to wear himself out. He had to be fresh for later. He came to a cinema and stopped to look at the posters and photos outside. The film was called
Summer Island
and the poster said it was a breathless tale of young love. He felt for the money in his pocket. He had just enough left for a ticket into the movie, with a bit over for a sandwich later on. He had to be sure to eat something later. It wouldn't do to bungle things because he was shaking with hunger. He went into the foyer and to the ticket box and asked for a seat in the stalls. The woman watched him count the coins out. This would normally have withered him with embarrassment, and he would have wanted to slink away, but now he felt above all that.

The session was just about to begin. He went past the usherette at the door and down the aisle. He took a seat in the middle of the stalls and put the bag on the seat beside him. There were perhaps a dozen people in the theatre. He slumped in his seat and rested his neck against the back of it and stared at the red velvet curtains. There was muted organ music coming through the speakers. A uniformed boy came down the aisle carrying a tray of sweets and ice-creams, but no-one bought anything.

The lights dimmed and a short item about hydro-electric power came on. Then there were previews of a couple of upcoming features. Then it was interval. The boy came with the tray again. Two or three men went down the aisle to a door with “Gentlemen” lit above it. The youth wished the main film would start. He was starting to feel a bit aimless, sitting there, as though the momentum was faltering. That mustn't happen. It might be hard to get it going again later. Then the lights went down.

Summer Island
started with a scene of the sea crashing on rocks behind the opening titles, the theme music swelling and receding in time with the waves. The story of the young lovers was very touching and as it unfolded his emotions responded. He sat with his eyes wet and a lump in his throat. It came to a scene in a summery glade where the boy and girl lie naked in each other's arms. There are beams of sunlight slanting down through the trees and the camera is right on their faces as they kiss and you can hear their tender sighs and murmurs.

How sweet life was, the youth thought. Not real life, but life in a movie or a book or a song, or in the pages of history. Life in those was truer because it brought out your feelings in the purest way. He'd had so many pure moments like that. He'd had moments so sweet it gave him a pang of despair to realise there'd be no more of them after tonight.